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Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Neons by OPI Collection Swatches & Review

Today I have the new Neons by OPI Collection to show you. This is the first time OPI has released a full-size neon collection, they have previously released neons in mini bottles pretty much exclusively. I personally love mini bottles, from most every brand except OPI, their little brush and bottle is a pain in the butt to use. So I was excited to see these six shades were all full sized!

They were released with a white base coat called Put A Coat On! meant to be worn underneath so the colors will "pop" more. I don't really like using white base coats, but I wanted to see if it really made a difference with these colors, so I did these swatches with two coats of white base underneath the ring fingernail. They dry to a satin matte finish so I used top coat for all of these swatches.

First is Life Gave Me Lemons, a neon yellow with green undertones. It's quite bright and was hard to capture on film, as most neons can be, and it makes my skin look so tan. The formula was nice, I used three coats for full opacity. I see basically no difference when used over the white base. I even posted a shot of this on my instagram and asked if people could tell which finger I used the white base on and there wasn't a clear consensus, meaning to me that they couldn't really tell.

I also wanted to show what one coat looks like so here is a shot after one coat, pre-clean up of course. You can definitely tell a difference when it's layered over the white base, but to get fully opaque I needed three coats so I don't feel like it makes a big difference in the end.

one coat, over white on ring finger

Juice Bar Hopping is a beautiful bright vivid orange, not sure if it's a real neon. This one was a little thick but manageable. I love oranges and this one looks very juicy and yummy. Three coats. I don't see a difference when used over the white, although it looks like a little lighter, the pinky looks the same to me so it might just be how the lighting is hitting the different fingers. Trust me, in real life there is no difference.

Push & Pur-pull is a lovely deep bold purple. I wouldn't classify this as neon. It dries darker than I expected. This formula wasn't good, I found it to be very streaky and quite thick. It took effort to get a nice result. This is three coats. I see no difference with the white base.

Hotter Than You Pink is a bright blue toned pink with a bit of shimmer and a purpley blue flash. This is pretty gorgeous and the formula was fine. I used three coats. There is a small difference when used over white, it's a tiny bit more opaque and there's less of a flash.

You Are So Outta Lime! is a bright medium eastery green neon. This is unique to my collection which is cool, I like this. Ok formula, no complaints. Three coats. No difference over the white base in my opinion.

Down to the Core-al is a fiery neon coral with slight shimmer. I love corals and this is no exception. It dries a bit more pink toned than it looks in the bottle. Patchy formula unfortunately. I used three coats. With the white base, the color appears a bit more opaque and not as "juicy", also a tad more orange toned.

Put A Coat On! is a fine white base coat, I needed two coats to get it fully opaque without any streaks. Personally I don't like to have the extra step of trying to cover all of the white base with my polish. I don't really think it makes that big of a difference under any of these polishes. If you did want to use a white underneath, I still wouldn't really say you needed to purchase this one if you already have a good white in your collection. If you do thicker coats than I do you could get away with only two coats of color if you use the white base, but I think three coats of color on their own looks the same. I will say that the white base dries really quickly so that was nice.

You can purchase these now for $9 ($10.95 CAN) each. I believe these are being added to the OPI permanent collection so they won't be disappearing anytime soon. What do you think of this collection? Do you think you would prefer using the white base or not? See ya next time and thanks for stopping by :)